Chart: Twitter and Facebook chatter mushroomed as stock market tanked

There’s an old adage in the media business that “if it bleeds, it leads.” That also seems to be holding true for social media chatter, especially as it relates to the bloodletting in the stock market this week. Seattle’s Simply Measured, which just scored $750,000 in financing, just released an analysis of conversations across Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and video sites this week where the terms “Nasdaq,” “stock market” or “Dow Jones” were used.

It would also appear that when the market is tanking the community is much more active. The chart above shows that despite the almost 450 point gain from the market yesterday and ~200 point gain this morning, the amount of mentions have been dwarfed by the mentions when the market was falling on 8/10/2011.

Simply Measured also compared the chatter across the various channels. Interestingly, Twitter was by far the biggest driver of conversation, cementing its role as a place for real-time news content.

Given Twitter’s smaller user base — at least compared to Facebook — I was surprised at how much of the conversation was taking place there.

John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat. Follow him @johnhcook and email john@geekwire.com.